Today: Yelp shares slow their slide after Wall Street analysts dismiss a documentary’s explosive charges about its business practices as unfounded. Also, Facebook again hits a new high, and Tesla continues its recent surge.

The lead: Analysts say Yelp allegations are nothing new, have been debunked

Wall Street rushed to the defense of Yelp on Friday, halting its slide from Thursday’s trading session following word of a new documentary film that challenges the San Francisco user-review site’s business practices.

Yelp shares plunged 3.5 percent Thursday, to $45.18, after a Kickstarter campaign was announced to help fund the documentary “Billion Dollar Bully,” which claims in not-so-subtle terms that the company runs a mafia-like extortion racket with businesses, where companies who refuse to advertise get penalized on the site. “They forcibly make you pay for their services, or you get more and more negative reviews,” one Oakland restaurant owner says in the film’s teaser.

But on Friday, Wunderlich Securities analyst Blake Harper came to Yelp’s defense, reiterating a Buy rating and $90 price target while dismissing the allegations as unfounded.

“The trailer appears to offer no new information about Yelp’s review filter or local business owners’ complaints about reviews on the site, and it insinuates that Yelp extorts businesses by manipulating reviews, which we, along with the courts, the FTC, and a Harvard Business School study, have been unable to find any evidence of,” Harper said in his note.

Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Youssef Squali backed that stance: “We note that this is not a new issue, and that to-date the argument has been largely debunked,” he said in a note, according to MarketWartch.

In January, the FTC closed a yearlong investigation into Yelp’s business practices without taking action.

Yelp shares shot up more than $1 in early trading Friday, before settling down as the day went on, closing down 24 cents, or 0.53 percent, to $44.94.

Harper compared the Yelp expose to a Michael Moore film, saying, “we believe there is a clear agenda to take down a subject, the truth and facts are obscured, and there is a strong emotional appeal.”

The take-down film is just the latest speedbump for Yelp. Shares are down almost 18 percent in 2015, and down 48 percent in the past 12 months after earnings reports showed slowing user growth. In an effort to spur growth, Yelp bought online food-delivery service Eat 24 last month for $134 million, which it hopes will help attract more advertising customers. Harper is predicting an increase in users in the first quarter of 2015, and calls the recent stock slide a buying opportunity.

SV150 market report: Facebook hits a new high, again

Wall Street ended the week on a high note, with the major indexes closing with daily gains near 1 percent.

Facebook continued to surge, hitting new intraday and closing highs Friday. The Menlo Park social network ended the day up $1.05, or 1.27 percent, to $83.80, after briefly topping $84 during trading. Facebook is riding high on expectations of further growth in its mobile ad business. It’s also opening up its Messenger platform to developers, which could create more functions for the popular app, TechCrunch reported.

Intel shares jumped 1.85 percent, or 57 cents, to $31.31 a day after jointly announcing with Google and TAG Heuer the development of a new luxury smartwatch. Hewlett-Packard leapt 1.34 percent, or 44 cents, to $33.28 after the Palo Alto company boosted its quarterly dividend by 10 percent, to 17.6 cents per share.

Tesla Motors continued its recent gains, rising 1.24 percent, or $2.43, to $198.08 a day after announcing an ambitious leap toward autonomous driving. While shares are down more than 10 percent this year, Tesla has gained almost 5 percent over the past week. Google gained $1.28, or 0.23 percent, to $564.95, despite a report that the Mountain View tech giant narrowly dodged an FTC antitrust lawsuit in 2012.

Apple dipped $1.60, or 1.25 percent to $125.90, after reports that the new Apple TV set-top box will be revealed at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference in June.

Rather than leaving their families behind, while facing possible death and paying “coyotes” to bring them to America in search of a better life, why don’t these immigrants protest in front of Mexican consulates or the Mexican Embassy and demand their government grant them the freedoms Americans enjoy?